Strange, pulsating hum baffles Sandia Heights resident

By Stephanie Garcia

Phil Ciofalo, 81, is tired of being pestered by a constant humming noise in his house—and is even more annoyed by the fact that he can't figure out where it originates.

Ciofalo, a retired chemical engineer, has lived in his far Northeast Heights home since 1984. His doctor says he has the hearing of a newborn baby. He started hearing the noise roughly three and a half years ago.

"The sound got worse (with time) and now it's going on day and night. You hear a vibration like a truck idling in your driveway."

Ciofalo said at first people thought he was crazy but then they began to hear it, too. "People ask 'how can you live with the noise?' I have a cassette player and natural sound tapes to help me sleep." Ciofalo said a friend of his described the hum as a steady stream of noise accompanied by an intermittent pulse. Similar complaints have been reported in Taos for years.

Haiti's Sad Tutorial on Democracy

By Jerry Ortiz y Pino

It is too bad that our actions speak louder than our words. If that were not so, our treatment of other countries would go into the history books as benign, altruistic, principled. We would be trusted. We would be a beacon of hope. Those are the things that our leaders have always said we stand for.

Dateline: France—A 35-year-old artist, allegedly traumatized over the recent bombings in Spain, was convicted of trying to run over a pedestrian he believed to be Osama bin Laden. The artist, identified only as Pierre, was sentenced last Tuesday by a court in southern France. Pierre was handed a three-month suspended sentence and ordered to pay the victim $615. "If it was [bin Laden], we would have won $5 million," said Pierre's lawyer, David Mendel, referring to the U.S. government's reward for the wanted terrorist. Unfortunately, the victim was not bin Laden. The pedestrian—a man in his 30s—was able to run away from Pierre's car, which crashed along the side of a street near the historic center of Montpellier. Mendel told the court that his client was "the victim of a hallucination."

Like watching the credits for LOTR: Return of the King, the March 15 council meeting made one aware of the thousands of people working off screen as city employees, outside experts, volunteers, neighborhood groups, consultants, boards, committees and interagency coordinators. Reports on the 2025 Metropolitan Transportation Plan and the Middle Rio Grande Regional Water Plan represented two of the largest efforts.

How does one respond to people like State Sen. Steve Komadina and attorney Paul Becht in "Defining Marriage" (March 11-17)? After all, they seem learned enough based on their professions; however, like many pious people they have opened their hearts to God and closed their minds at the same time. This is not surprising given that freedom of thought is anathema to most religions. But, why would our Creator endow us with such ability to think and to reason yet expect us not to use it, demanding blind obedience instead?